-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- For years , Alfonso Torress-Cook followed the rules in his quest to eliminate hospital-acquired infections . Patients at his hospital received large doses of antibiotics and were scrubbed down with alcohol-based soaps , as he and his colleagues aimed to kill every bacterium possible . Search and destroy was the mantra .

By upending conventional wisdom , Alfonso Torress-Cook was able to slash hospital-acquired infection rates .

Still , patients became sick with bacterial infections after checking in . Some died .

`` I never saw anything change . I saw things getting worse , '' Torress-Cook said .

Torress-Cook eventually joined Pacific Hospital of Long Beach , in California , where as director of epidemiology and patient safety , he changed the rules and slashed the number of patients who become infected .

Torress-Cook is part of a growing movement in medicine that no longer accepts hospital-acquired infections as inevitable complications . Every year , such infections sicken 1.7 million and kill 99,000 people in the United States .

At Pacific Hospital , Torress-Cook does n't go after all bacteria , just the dangerous ones .

The staff members at the 184-bed hospital use antibiotics sparingly , feed patients yogurt to replenish healthy bacteria in the gut and bathe patients daily , using a soap that maintains the natural pH of the patient 's skin , killing only bacteria that do n't belong there . Meet some of the people fighting hospital-acquired infections ''

Torress-Cook is also obsessive about hygiene : Nurses clean under patients ' fingernails and brush their teeth daily . He also enlisted the hospital 's cleaning crew as part of the infection-fighting team . Rooms receive a thorough cleaning every day -- more than simply emptying the trash and mopping the floor , he says .

Under Torress-Cook , Pacific Hospital 's infection rate for the so-called superbug MRSA is down to 0.01 per 1,000 discharges , 430 times better than the national average .

Approximately one out of every 22 patients who checks into a U.S. hospital acquires a bacterial infection , adding more than $ 28 billion to health care costs , according to a 2009 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

But there are signs of improvement . Pennsylvania , which requires the most extensive reporting of hospital-acquired infections , saw the annual rate for all infections drop 8 percent , according to the most recent figures available from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council .

And there are other signs of progress . The development and use of a simple checklist for a common procedure that threads a so-called central line to supply medicine directly to the bloodstream has been extraordinarily effective .

The checklist made central line infections almost nonexistent at the 108 intensive care units in Michigan that adopted it . More than 1,700 lives -- and $ 246 million -- were saved in the first three years the checklist was adopted , according to the state hospital association .

The checklist is now being adopted in all 50 states and three countries : the United Kingdom , Spain and Peru , says checklist designer Dr. Peter Pronovost , from Johns Hopkins University and Hospitals .

At hospitals large and small , raising the head of the bed for patients on ventilators , brushing patients ' teeth and taking other precautions have dramatically reduced ventilator-associated pneumonia , another common and costly infection .

Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids , Minnesota , has used these techniques to cut its ventilator-associated pneumonia rate by more than half , to 2.7 cases per 1,000 ventilator days .

`` Our goal is zero , '' says Michelle Farber , a registered nurse who is Mercy 's senior infection preventionist .

Simply requiring hospitals to report their infections has forced them to be more accountable to their patients , says Lisa McGiffert , who heads Consumers Union 's Stop Hospital Infections campaign , which among other things has pushed for more transparency .

Twenty-six states now have laws requiring hospitals to report rates for urinary tract and other infections .

Paul Levy , CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston , Massachusetts , is a big fan of publishing infection rates . He puts the hospital 's rates on its Web site and on his blog . Simply putting the spotlight on hospital-acquired infections keeps the staff focused , he says .

Hospitals also have a new financial incentive to cut infections .

As of October 1 , 2008 , Medicare no longer pays hospitals for the added costs incurred by patients who develop catheter-related urinary tract infections and other catheter - or surgery-related infections .

McGiffert says there 's been a cultural shift in the past five years .

`` I think it 's moving us toward eradication of infection or at least where infections are rare and will not be accepted , '' she says .

@highlight

Every year , hospital-acquired infections sicken 1.7 million , kill 99,000 in U.S.

@highlight

They add more than $ 28 billion to health care costs annually

@highlight

Small changes -- using a checklist and brushing patients ' teeth -- can lower rates

@highlight

Expert : Attitude is slowly shifting away from accepting infections as inevitable